Where do I go to sell my leads?

Sutra

Sutra

Investor and Business Mentor
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How do I go about selling the leads that I get? Is there a reputable online marketplace?
 
There are lots of different types of leads of varying quality, which will determine how much you can get paid for them.

Typically, the easiest and quickest way would be to find a network that is attracting advertisers who are looking for leads. But if you chose your niche first, you can become that person yourself, reaching out to companies and letting them understand what you're doing and how you can funnel leads into their own sales process.

These might be super crappy First Name and ZIP Code leads that might pay you 10¢ each. These are generally cold and uninterested leads that you bribed with a coupon or something. "Enter your email address and receive 50 cents off your next pack of gummy bears."

They could be forms of 3-pages long that ask for all kinds of unbelievable details. These are harder to generate but are extremely motivated and hot. You might know their work history, medical history, whatever.

There's also phone leads which are pretty hot leads. If someone actually picks up the phone and makes a call, they aren't playing around. But there's a lot of infrastructure here, such as call tracking, automated menu pre-qualifying, time on call, and having a call center actively answering calls and closing them effectively.

Tons of types of leads varying quality.

You can get paid per lead or only paid on a converting lead as well. People tend to think of that as an either/or but if I had the means to track it or at least trusted the advertiser, I'd do both. I'd want payment for every lead and a bonus if they close it. That way your income isn't' contingent upon their ability to be closers. They'll turn around and blame it on the quality of the leads and suddenly it's your fault and nobody's getting paid.
 
@Trankuility He's asking what industry/niche the lead is for. A "lead" is suppose to lead to a sale of "something". What are you telling the person that is filling out the form they will get a sales phone call about? Insurance, life insurance, car insurance, home loan, shoes? There are places for the majors.
 
Well, these leads are Email + Zip so sounds like they fall into the super crappy camp, haha.

Thanks for the info @Ryuzaki and @CCarter

@c4yrslf12 I will PM you.
 
Trankuility said:
I will PM you.
Click to expand...

Got it, thanks.

In this situation, I'd go to a few of the bigger players in the niche you're in and see what it is they are marketing specifically, and tailor your lead queries to fit their needs. I'm unfamiliar with the niche you're in, so I can't exactly point you in the right direction to an exact buyer, but the first thing I'd look at is to try to nail down what it is the buyer needs.

Example: Let's say you were selling leads for people buying cars. What do you think the dealerships want?
  1. Name
  2. Phone
  3. Email
  4. Location
  5. Purchase Type (buy/lease)
  6. Manufacturer
  7. Make
  8. Model
  9. Price Range
  10. etc.
The more items you can collect, the stronger the lead is, the more valuable it is to the end purchaser.

Now go apply this to your niche. Beyond Name/Phone/Email... what else will turn them from random internet stranger to a person who might make the purchase?

Give them something to sell on. Emotion, Need, Price, Event, etc.
 
When collecting leads like this, is it normal to bring them into my own AR? Or should I only collect them to give to the companies who are purchasing the leads?
 
What's an "AR"?

But if you are talking about lead management - ALWAYS have a copy of the leads you send customers. That's just being smart. Time stamping everything and make sure you can see when they've seen the lead as well. I setup a customer lead platform where people would get the leads integrated into whatever they have - Salesforce, etc. but also I had my own reporting system so I knew exactly what was going on for accountability.

For example if you are selling "sales" as in you only get paid when things close you'd have to know when things close? And also make sure they cannot fuck you. In cases like that I ALWAYS require for them to utilize my operation. If I'm selling a per lead I'll integrate with them, but also keep my own reporting.

I can't trust anyone period, especially coming from the affiliate world where not reporting 15 or 25% of sales is the norm cause of scrubbing or the network needs to make "profits", fuck all that.
 
An email+zip+IP with no demographics data or intent is pretty much worthless at this stage of the internet. Talking rates like $5 for 1000 with that kind of stuff at best really.

It's the intent, interest and demographics that make the data worth something.
 
@CCarter by AR I meant Auto Responder. Good points about making sure I don't get screwed. That will be helpful, thank you.

@miketpowell I do have about 800 emails + zips that also include the following demo info: interests, age range, gender, highest level of education completed, employment status, and relationship status.

That's a drop in the bucket, I know, haha. But that was just by putting a link in my welcome email to a survey I created. I'm sure if I pushed it I could get a lot more. But that goes back to my question about the AR. Not sure if it's kosher to sell leads that I have in my own auto responder sequence.
 
2 of my biggest lead gen clients came from straight cold calling and asking for someone in charge. I was told they do not typically offer it to people, but the fact that I called and talked to someone on the phone and sold myself made it an easy choice.

I used to do real estate leads as well, I would look up the biggest dudes in the market in my area, but the best are the smaller companies sometimes.

Think about if a person is on page 2 for the keyword and they have no idea how to do SEO/PPC/Whatever. Letting them know they can take leads away from the major players is like printing money.
 
Phenom said:
2 of my biggest lead gen clients came from straight cold calling and asking for someone in charge. I was told they do not typically offer it to people, but the fact that I called and talked to someone on the phone and sold myself made it an easy choice.

I used to do real estate leads as well, I would look up the biggest dudes in the market in my area, but the best are the smaller companies sometimes.

Think about if a person is on page 2 for the keyword and they have no idea how to do SEO/PPC/Whatever. Letting them know they can take leads away from the major players is like printing money.
Click to expand...

Ah, great angle to consider about that 2nd page thing, thank you good sir.
 
Phenom said:
2 of my biggest lead gen clients came from straight cold calling and asking for someone in charge. I was told they do not typically offer it to people, but the fact that I called and talked to someone on the phone and sold myself made it an easy choice.

I used to do real estate leads as well, I would look up the biggest dudes in the market in my area, but the best are the smaller companies sometimes.

Think about if a person is on page 2 for the keyword and they have no idea how to do SEO/PPC/Whatever. Letting them know they can take leads away from the major players is like printing money.
Click to expand...

Great info. This is my plan of action for a few upcoming projects.

Question if/when you have time: Do you typically cold call lead gen customers BEFORE you build out/rank a site or AFTER it's already getting traffic and leads?

Common sense would dictate you make contact before making the effort... but there might be something I'm missing...
 
Capital said:
Great info. This is my plan of action for a few upcoming projects.

Question if/when you have time: Do you typically cold call lead gen customers BEFORE you build out/rank a site or AFTER it's already getting traffic and leads?

Common sense would dictate you make contact before making the effort... but there might be something I'm missing...
Click to expand...

So for the current gem I have, which a few members here have seen, I used the whole "Fake It, Until You Make It" strategy. I noticed the industry had a bunch of shit looking websites that I would not buy from, as well as most of the 1st page for the main kw is not even mobile friendly. So give them what they dont have :smile: **Make sure you can talk about the reasons why your site is the shit compared to others.** (responsive design, structured data, local SEO, etc.)

  • Created the site in WP, 100% responsive - (used that as a selling point when closing deals)
  • Used SERPWoo and SEMRush to get a list of 10 of the top brands in the industry.
  • Called 3 smaller companies, told them I do marketing full time at an agency doing digital marketing and had a site that I was building in their niche.
Now if you were a company that needs leads, and some random person takes the time to get the number to call and research your industry, AND knows how to do digital marketing?

But that is just the initial hook.

My twist to this is I act like I am oblivious at first to how the "lead gen" process works in the current industry I am targeting. This makes the person you are talking to on the phone feel comfortable that they are not just being "marketed" to. I basically make myself sound like the shit in everything I do, but I am "unfamiliar" with the industry.

I then tell them that I have the site I created for "Test Purposes" to sharpen my SEO/PPC/SMM skills and it has taken off and I am not prepared to take the volume of traffic/leads that are coming in at the moment. Then show them your site, explain you are moving up in the SERPs, and watch them start to be intrigued.

(If they think that you are new to the industry but know digital marketing, and your site looks the part, all the sudden they think they are getting a deal)

This is where you can ask if they do anything like a commission or pay per lead service. I always talk the company up and say "I don't want to use any of the big companies because they don't get the personal service that the smaller companies have."

I have landed 3 clients in the "1%" markets this way. Not to mention the connections you get from building REAL VOCAL relationships with the people buying your leads can pay off. 2 of my lead gen clients have referred me to sister companies and friends. This is where targeting the 1% comes in handy, since I know they all have money, its easy to get them to pay.

One thing I have noticed over the last year working with some loaded 1% people is they are all about ego. Most of them have a competitor they hate that is on the first page and they are quick to talk about it. This is where your research can pay off, if you can talk about what their competitors are doing, and how you do it better, they will pay whatever knowing that their competitors can not get the leads you are providing.

Hope this helps a bit.
 
Phenom said:
So for the current gem I have, which a few members here have seen, I used the whole "Fake It, Until You Make It" strategy. I noticed the industry had a bunch of shit looking websites that I would not buy from, as well as most of the 1st page for the main kw is not even mobile friendly. So give them what they dont have :smile: **Make sure you can talk about the reasons why your site is the shit compared to others.** (responsive design, structured data, local SEO, etc.)

  • Created the site in WP, 100% responsive - (used that as a selling point when closing deals)
  • Used SERPWoo and SEMRush to get a list of 10 of the top brands in the industry.
  • Called 3 smaller companies, told them I do marketing full time at an agency doing digital marketing and had a site that I was building in their niche.
Now if you were a company that needs leads, and some random person takes the time to get the number to call and research your industry, AND knows how to do digital marketing?

But that is just the initial hook.

My twist to this is I act like I am oblivious at first to how the "lead gen" process works in the current industry I am targeting. This makes the person you are talking to on the phone feel comfortable that they are not just being "marketed" to. I basically make myself sound like the shit in everything I do, but I am "unfamiliar" with the industry.

I then tell them that I have the site I created for "Test Purposes" to sharpen my SEO/PPC/SMM skills and it has taken off and I am not prepared to take the volume of traffic/leads that are coming in at the moment. Then show them your site, explain you are moving up in the SERPs, and watch them start to be intrigued.

(If they think that you are new to the industry but know digital marketing, and your site looks the part, all the sudden they think they are getting a deal)

This is where you can ask if they do anything like a commission or pay per lead service. I always talk the company up and say "I don't want to use any of the big companies because they don't get the personal service that the smaller companies have."

I have landed 3 clients in the "1%" markets this way. Not to mention the connections you get from building REAL VOCAL relationships with the people buying your leads can pay off. 2 of my lead gen clients have referred me to sister companies and friends. This is where targeting the 1% comes in handy, since I know they all have money, its easy to get them to pay.

One thing I have noticed over the last year working with some loaded 1% people is they are all about ego. Most of them have a competitor they hate that is on the first page and they are quick to talk about it. This is where your research can pay off, if you can talk about what their competitors are doing, and how you do it better, they will pay whatever knowing that their competitors can not get the leads you are providing.

Hope this helps a bit.
Click to expand...

Holy shit, thanks for those golden nuggets. I'm looking at luxury/high ticket niches as well and literally everything you dropped was very encouraging and enlightening.
Thank you.
 
Capital said:
Holy shit, thanks for those golden nuggets. I'm looking at luxury/high ticket niches as well and literally everything you dropped was very encouraging and enlightening.
Thank you.
Click to expand...
For sure. Honestly this shit is about building trust. Luxury niche people did not get rich by being dumb, so get them to trust and believe in you and you would be shocked at what they will give you :smile:
 
CCarter said:
But if you are talking about lead management - ALWAYS have a copy of the leads you send customers. That's just being smart. Time stamping everything and make sure you can see when they've seen the lead as well. I setup a customer lead platform where people would get the leads integrated into whatever they have - Salesforce, etc. but also I had my own reporting system so I knew exactly what was going on for accountability.
Click to expand...

Totally agree with this thinking and practice it myself. taking it a step further on not getting taken for a fool - let's say you've got a commission deal on leads and you are dumping them into salesforce or some similar CRM tool, how do you ensure honest reporting from the company working the leads?

Yes you have a record on your end, but once that lead hits their system how do you ensure the client is honestly tracking/reporting the sales on your leads?

Seems like a good pay-per-lead deal would be the most benefit from our end as there isn't a way to fudge numbers and get fucked over in the deal - other than the client simply not paying. I've found that in less competitive niches a commission based lead structure is the only agreement companies will make as you're seen not as taking a lead from a competitor and handing it to the person you're dealing with, but you're working in incremental sales, bringing your client new business.

Great thread, thank you. learning so much in here.
 
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